Questions for your Libertarian Friend

When I tell most people I am a libertarian, they assume one of two things: 1. This guy is an ultra-right-wing nut, or 2. this guy is an ultra-left-wing nut. I get asked almost every day what exactly I believe and what most libertarians believe.

My co-authors here at TCC are asking these same questions: over the last few weeks, I have seen my fellow writers both praise and shun libertarianism, and attempt to understand what many see as the flaws in its arguments.

Ultimately, you should research the facts on what being libertarian really means, and what libertarians truly believe in. Freedom of choice. Individual responsibility. Minimal government. It sounds like exactly what most conservative Republicans–and liberal Democrats–tout off. According to the Libertarian Party of The United States, “we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.”

Many conservatives find me too liberal because of my stances on gay rights, drug decriminalization, and abortion. Many liberals find me too conservative because of my stances on gun rights, education, deregulation of the private sector, and abortion. My stances on these issues reflect not only my personal beliefs and upbringing, but the views shared by many libertarians. In an interview with Reason.com, Greg Gutfeld explains how he became a libertarian. “I became a conservative by being around liberals and I became a libertarian by being around conservatives.” You hit the nail on the head there, Greg.

The last year of my life has been a confusing, contradictory discovery of my political views. Fortunately, your friendly neighborhood libertarian friend is now here to to share those experiences and explain everything. Maybe through this piece you, too, will find out you are a libertarian. Don’t be afraid of it. Come out of the shadows.

“So you are a very strong Christian, yet you believe two, consenting adults, regardless of sex, gender or otherwise should be allowed to marry?”

Yes. In fact, if I want to marry my dog, let me. The government should stay out of marriage all together except for the Justice of the Peace signing that marriage license. I also believe that if you are married in one state, no matter what their policy is on gay marriage, you should be respected as married in another. The federal government should make no mandate of states to legalize gay marriage.

“Alright, but I bet you only want marijuana legalized so you can go smoke pot with all your friends.”

I have never touched the stuff. I have no interest in smoking marijuana. An image I always receive from conservatives is that libertarians are all drug addicts. Not true. Penn Jillete, a noted libertarian and magician, supports marijuana legalization, but admits to never drinking or doing drugs, and then continues to call President Obama a hypocrite for flip-flopping back and forth between his stance on legalization. The federal government should make no mandate for the legalization or continued prohibition of certain drugs.

“What about gun control? What about preventing a horrible thing like Newtown from happening again?”

The sick, twisted, disgusting, sad excuse of a human being that committed this crime is lucky he shot himself in the head. There’s a special place reserved for you in hell, my friend. What happened at Newtown was an utter tragedy. Unfortunately, gun control wouldn’t have stopped the tragedy. It just leads to more crime: look at Detroit, or Chicago. This map details the percent of murders involving guns. Let me preface this by saying that while many states set gun laws, it is ultimately in the hands of police of local cities to prevent gun crime. Refer to the Second Amendment on this one.

“What about abortion? Or birth control?”

This is where most libertarians make enemies on both sides. First, I was raised in a strong Christian home. We went to church every Sunday unless someone was sick, dead, or dying. Then we went to church even more. I was taught through the church that murder is a sin of the highest degree. I was also taught through years of school that life begins from conception. Within days, a baby’s heart begins to beat. At 21 weeks, that baby is fully formed, with all of the functions necessary to sustain life outside the womb. Abortion is a disgusting crime against your fellow man.

That being said, I do not have the right to tell a woman, or a man involved, that the mother cannot have an abortion. However, the procedure should not be paid for by the taxpayers. If a woman wants an abortion, it is on her, her husband, her father, her baby-daddy, or whomever, or the good “charity” of friends, to pay for it. If a woman wants to take preventative measures such as taking the birth control pill, that is her choice. I have no moral disagreement with this. But again, not on the taxpayer’s dollar. The federal government shall make no mandate on the right of a woman to have an abortion, nor shall it allow abortions on taxpayer monies, federal, state or otherwise.

There is a multitude of other issues that I could discuss at length. Ultimately, I believe that humanity is intrinsically good. While many people may view this as naive, I do not see it that way. Much of what is funded by public money can be funded by the private sector. But, it is their choice to do so.

Therein lies the key word in much of libertarian philosophy: choice. Many people view libertarians as heartless or cold human beings, who do not care about the troubles of others. Not true. Again, charity is a great feeling. I am more than happy to buy food for a starving family. In my current condition, I may not be able to do that, but I hope that one day I can. I have spotted many a friend for McDonald’s, with the hope that if the need arose, I would be repaid in McDonald’s, Taco Bell, pizza, etc.

There are some libertarians who believe that no government at all should exist. I disagree with this: there needs to be some form of government to be in charge of basic things like national defense, the upkeep of roads, the coining and printing of money, the regulation of interstate commerce (albeit low, preferably), and the maintaining of foreign relations. Libertarianism is best viewed as classical liberalism through the modern world view.

Liberals in the United States want more control over business, personal choice of healthcare, gun selection, and what kind of car you drive. Conservatives want more control over marriage rights, women’s health, and big business (though they have different ways of going about this). In the end, Libertarians will cease to be understood by either party, because neither fully reflects our views. I believe in the coming years, however, a strong Libertarian candidate will emerge through one of these two parties. But until that time comes, we who call ourselves Libertarians will be relegated back to the cultural hermit hole we reside in, scouring the blogosphere looking for people who criticize us.

And watching Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. Because Gutfeld is our leader, and Pinch is our mascot.

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15 Comments

Marissa
on December 8, 2013 at 1:49 pm

Thank you for putting some libertarian wisdom on this very sad right-slanted blog.

People that think laws will stop this are flat out clueless. You cannot ban something with a high demand and expect it to become history. Just like the black market for illegal drugs, people will make a black market for abortion. Health promotion in respect to contraceptive use and development of newer 100% effective contraceptives (like Vasalgel) will lower demand without violating a woman’s choice or the unborn’s right to life. Yay science!

While I do not agree with you on many issues, you show yourself to be a rational and thinking individual. Far better than most of the ideologically based, right-wing horseshit I read on this blog.Keep it up you may just have a rational future.

Good read, I enjoy the way you articulate your positions. Your argument about tax payer money on abortion seems like a can of worms. It makes sense in a pragmatic way with respect to the very charged issue at hand, but at the same time I am not sure opening up tax payer dollars to “conscientious objection” is necessarily a good idea. Take as a hypothetical someone who fully and truly believes that killing an animal for food is murder. (how one lives without the hope of bacon I don’t know, but this is a hypothetical) Surely there are militant vegans out there who believe that. A state, trying to spur job growth, offers subsidies to a slaughterhouse. Business is attracted, jobs are created, yet the beliefs of the individual are trod upon for the benefit of the community.

Now I suspect your counter would be that no subsidies should be given and the market should play out as it will, which could very well be a valid point but that is another argument all together. Take then an of necessary government existence, national defense. Another hypothetical, take someone who is a pacifist, opposed to their tax dollars being used in any way toward weapons of war or the paying of troops in combat zones, should the government be able to pay for that?

I hope I have articulated this properly, as it is not my intention to compare the act of abortion to either of the hypothetical, but rather the argument that tax dollars should not be used for purposes morally opposed. I see the appeal of libertarianism, but i do not see how “a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others,” can actually function in any real way.

Another Libertarian with a dream… and no example in the world of what it would look like.

The only reason we “had” limited Gov’t in this country was because States had laws controlling peoples behavior.

Remove those and you de facto NEED a big gov’t to clean up the mess. ….. which is what we have now.

As the family unite has declined with the new found “Liberty” ….we are feeding, medicating, housing, incarcerating and caring for the things family used to do. 50 years ago, fathers fed their kids, today you and I do via taxes.

I think this is a great explanatory post. I don’t think libertarians are unreasonable or radical. The basic principles are pretty easy to get. I do have some questions on your particular interpretation of libertarianism-

1) Do you think black citizens face current disadvantages from being denied freedom and opportunities for centuries? Black Americans disproportionately have very little wealth accumulated (land ownership and money) compared to white people. Do you think the most fair way to address those inequalities (assuming you agree they exist for those reasons) is to just have a laissez-faire attitude toward society? Or perhaps you see no moral obligation to address those inequalities at all?

2) Saying gun control doesn’t work because of Chicago is convenient cherrypicking. Restricting guns in a small geographic area, when guns are easily imported from Southern states with lax laws, is obviously ineffective. But try tackling Japan. They have 3-23 gun homicides per year, and we have over 10,000 each year (and we are only about 2.7x the size of Japan). Still think gun control can’t work?

3) You think people should be allowed to own guns. What about other arms? Machine guns? Automatic weapons with armor-piercing bullets? Anti-aircraft artillery? Chemical/nuclear weapons? Where do you draw the line, and why? And can everyone own guns? Convicted felons, people adjudicated mentally ill?

4) What about animal rights? Should puppy mills be legal? Torturing animals be tolerated?

I agree, but I think our Constitution should be “disrespected” in a certain sense, and I think Thomas Jefferson (who thought we should write a new Constitution every 19 years) would agree.

First, I think the Founding Fathers obviously had some worthwhile ideas, but they were still flawed men, even for their time. I would hope you would agree that their views on slavery, native Americans, and women’s rights were not very enlightened- at the least by today’s standards- but even during their lifetimes their were many more white men (and obviously women and non-white men) who held more enlightened attitudes toward those topics. Especially in the Quaker community.

My problem with the Constitution, is that it is extremely difficult to modify or expand. We got the 13-15 amendments only after a Civil War, and the Constitution still doesn’t acknowledge the fundamental right to vote. So we have a document that was written by mainly rich white men, that is very hard to alter. And when this small group of privileged white men started expanding democracy (to non-landowning men under Jackson, slowly to black citizens in the 19860s-1960s, to women) they never gave these important citizens the chance to modify the Constitution on the same terms that the Founders did. These oppressed groups were allowed to participate in a system that was created exclusively by white men, and could only alter it through an extremely restrictive process.

Look at the Senate, which today 21 states with 38.8 million people get 42 votes compared to California’s (38.8 million people) 2 votes. This allows a small minority of rural, largely-white voters to block virtually anything they don’t like.

When millions of once suppressed voices rightfully join a democracy, they shouldn’t have to be forced to subscribe to the system created by the people who suppressed their voices for so long. They should be allowed to help negotiate the very framework of the government on equal terms.

@Matt. That marriage argument from the article is what I hear most from libertarians. Making something “legal” is saying that you need permission from the government to allow or disallow an activity. That is NOT libertarian.

Another way to think about it is to say, “that is not even an issue for discussion.” We are seeking political answers to if we should restrict or loosen freedom of the individual. That is not my place; nor anyone’s place. On the example of marriage, I personally believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and I believe in the sacramental nature of that marriage, but marriage is also a religious and/or social contract between individuals. I don’t recognize “marriage” between two men, two women, or even two individuals who went through the courts, but that is my personal belief. Other libertarians have different ideas. It does not cause me to take that belief and force it on another. What is even the purpose of government sanctioned marriage? Financial benefits and tax benefit – again a construct of government.

I can live equitably with other with different ideas because government action would not be coercing me into violating my freedom of conscience.

The real point is that all of these issues have to be looked at outside of the “left vs right” paradigm that we have set up for ourselves to confine our thinking.

Matt’s sentence makes absolute sense…murder is a violation of the non aggression principle just as slavery is. The extermination of the unborn’s life is therefore an act of aggression, thus violating the NAP. If somebody said. “I’m against against a husband hiring an assassin to kill his wife but I don’t have the right to stop him from doing so”, the person would be absolutely mistaken. In the realm of function of the government, protecting life from aggression by others, is definitely within that realm.

“The government should stay out of marriage all together except for the Justice of the Peace signing that marriage license.”

If most libertarians believe this, you’re one of the few that actually says it. Most just say “it should be legal,” and leave it at that. A few years ago, I was 100% against getting the government out of marriage. But now that I’ve seen that liberals use government to punish Christians where SSM is legal, I’m in favor of the government getting out of it as well.

“That being said, I do not have the right to tell a woman, or a man involved, that the mother cannot have an abortion.”

As I pointed out in my comments on another article here that stated something similar, this stance by libertarians baffles me. If you believe all people should have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, why are the unborn not included in that? And the fact that you identify yourself as a Christian who is against abortion makes this position even more perplexing. Let’s be honest here. Abortion is murder. Period. You even state that in your article. Yet you’re okay with someone else doing it? What sense does that make? It’s like saying “I think all men should be free, but I don’t have a right to stop a person from owning a slave.”

Again, on the subject of abortion, this really applies to all moral issues. Our problem with the Republican Party is purely legislated morality. Because of laws outlining it’s legality, there are many debates on this. It’s a very touchy issue. According to the Libertarian Party themselves, “Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.” It is the only issue in this country that I really have a moral argument against it. I do believe it is murder. I do believe life begins at conception. And by God, if there were enough places and people willing to adopt these poor children, I would want it outlawed all together. I should have prefaced this by saying while this is mostly party platform, not all libertarians believe exactly this. This is the only instance where myself and other libertarians seem to differ from party platforms. All types of abortion are disgusting, especially late-term. As someone who has watched abortions, I hope no woman or child ever has to go through with one. Unfortunately, woman who do not want to be pregnant will do all they can to not be pregnant. Prior to safe, legal abortion, many woman would get the job done by shoving a coat-hanger inside them, punching it out, poisoning themselves, and all sorts of things. Again, I pray every night that God would not allow such things to happen, and to not allow for unplanned pregnancies, but such things happen. It is extremely unfortunate and saddening, but there is nothing more I can do.